“We've had offers to re-enact certain scenes from Y Tu Mama Tambien,” Gael Garcia Bernal said of himself and Diego Luna during a discussion at the Apple Store Soho yesterday afternoon.
“And we have accepted many times,” Luna said back, not missing a beat.
This kind of back-and-forth report was rampant through the endlessly entertaining discussion between the actors, promoting Rudo y Cursi, their first acting collaboration since 2002’s Tambien. Rudo y Cursi, directed by Carlos Cuarón (who was also part of the conversation) and currently screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, finds the pair playing competitive stepbrothers who work on their family’s banana ranch until a scout sees their moves on a local football (soccer) team and sends them to the big leagues.
“We’ve been working together but avoiding acting in the same thing,” Luna said. “We created a company, we have a documentary film festival in Mexico… We have a lot going on. But it was cool to act again in a film that talks about brotherhood and has a lot to do with the connection we’ve made through these years.”
The talk - moderated by indieWIRE‘s Eugene Hernandez - made the rollicking charm of that connection quite clear, with dialogue ranging from Garcia Bernal mocking Luna’s performance in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights to Luna remarking as to whether Sean Penn or Garcia Bernal was a better kisser (in the end, his answer was actually none of the above, citing his work with Tom Hanks in The Terminal as the best man-on-man action he’d ever had: “It was off camera, so we went further”).
Besides being an onscreen reunion for the pair, Cursi is also the first film from Cha Cha Cha, a production company started by Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro.
“The films we do are about the point of view of a director who wants to tell a story,” Luna said of his work with Bernal on their own company, Canana.
“If it matters to him, it might matter to someone else. Through the process of shooting and getting the film ready, you just learn to please a director and his point of view. It’s all about confidence and believing in someone who has something to say.”
“The idea of putting together a company was inspired and formalized a little bit by what people like Carlos and Alfonso and Guillermo and Alejandro have been doing,” Garcia Bernal added. “Creating a small sense of community and helping each other. And not falling into a ridiculous temptation to elaborate a niche. The fact that Latin American films are having a little bit of resonance other than in their own countries is that they are incredibly free. They’re breaking all the molds, in a sense…”